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A SERMON 



PBEACHED IX 



UNION STREET CHURCH, BANGOR, 



ON SUNDAY EVENING, JUNE 1, 1856. 



By JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



BANGOR : 

PRINTED BY SAMUEL S. SMITH. 
1856. 



+ 







SERMON. 



LUKE xxi. 26. 

Men's hearts failing them fob. fear, and for looking after 
those things which are coming on the earth. 

I suppose that never, in the memory of any of us, has so 
much news been crowded in so short a time, of a sort to fill 
us with anxiety and alarm. The evils which statesmen have 
long foreboded, which the enemies of our Republic have pre- 
dicted all along, which moralists have sought to avert by timely 
reform, and politicians by untimely compromise, seem just 
ready to burst upon us. Before our minds are darkened by 
the fears and passions of the strife that seems impending, let 
us give ear to the solemn warning of the time, and for one 
hour look the circumstances of our position in the face. 

Two years ago, the experiment of popular sovereignty so 
called — that is, the right to carry slavery into territory declared 
by solemn compact for ever free — was set on foot in defiance 
of a voice of remonstrance that went up like low thunder from 
the whole horizon of the North. At this moment that experi- 
ment is a ghastly and bloody failure. Of the process I shall 
have a word to say by and by. This is the result. The fair 
fields of the fertile West are overrun by a mob of armed and 
drunken plunderers, and red with the blood of murdered men. 
Where flourishing towns stood are heaps of smoking ruins — in- 
habitants flying in terror of their lives, and the hard won hoard 
of the thrifty settler given over to sack and license. Unarmed 
and unresisting men are shot down like wild beasts : the bravest 
and ablest being first taken, by treachery or violence, and their 
lives set at hazard to the passion of a brutal mob. Private 
property, on the highways of public travel, has not these many 
months been safe from organized gangs of robbers. A brave 
and faithful gospel missionary, a friend whom I have known for 
many years, is plundered of his modest household wealth, has 



been forced to pace as armed sentinel on winter nights, and is 
liable to two years' imprisonment for simply exercising that 
constitutional right of free Bpeech which was his Christian 
duty, and tor having in his possession written defences of hu- 
man liberty. Our daily news is hut the detail of violence and 
outrage, if not of actual civil war. This, under the name of 
popular sovereignty, is the battle of Freedom and Slavery in 
the West. 

Then turn to the Capital of the Nation — for three years my 
own home — which I left just when the "era of good will and 
peace" was inaugurated by the compromise of L850. 1 [en 
ries of brutal threats, and personal assaults, and hitter insult- and 
recriminations, extending over the last >i\ months, has just 
terminated in two deeds of such atrocity, that for their parallel 
we must go back to the blind rage of the worst times of the 
French Revolution. A helpless poor man is shot down in p le- 
sion wantonly, and the murderer still holds his seat unchal- 
lenged in the Council of the nation : a noble and brave pro- 
test against a political crime on the door of the Senate, has 
been met not by argument, but by cowardly assault on a gen- 
tleman unarmed and pinioned to his seat, and blows barely- 
short of death. 

I have a word to say of this last. Senator Sumner is a gen- 
tleman whom 1 have known, slightly indeed, but in some of the 
pleasantest relations of a scholar'.- life. He is a man singu- 
larly courteous and refined — with that thorough breeding, both 
as gentleman and scholar, which is so rare among the statesmen 
of this country. Of the younger generation of our public 
men, as Everett and Webster among the elder, he is the one 
who in other countries has done most to honor the American 
name. Of all those who are equally eminent in public life among 
us, none has won a more pure and unsullied fame. Of so 
courteous a demeanor he has Bhown himself in the Senate, that 
for months he lav under the reproach of timidity ; — as if he 
had not boldness to defend as statesman the opinions which he 
had advanced as a moral theorist. Thisslui he had sufficient- 
ly refuted already, by In- masterlj argument on the Fugitive 
Slave Law. But few even of his friends, 1 imagine, were ful- 
ly prepared for the intrepid vigor and consummate ability of 

that defence of Freedom, winch bas nearly cosl him his life. It 
i-, as bas been well Baid, "a Bpeech worth dying for;" 
if not the first, among the tir-t. in grandeur of tone and argu- 
ment, of our whole political history. 

A word more as to the language by which (it is charged) he 



invited this assault. The use of personal invective in a speech 
is always offensive to a refined and gentler taste. But one who 
knows the great orators of the world, sees at once that they 
have no delicacy on this score — no effeminacy of taste — no 
shrinking from hard blows given and taken in the wordy fight. 
Only a tyrant, a coward, or an assassin, would think to silence 
the tongue of an opponent by a bludgeon or a threat. The 
Constitution guarantees freedom of debate. Every public body 
has rules that define its liberties ; and it is answer enough to 
the pretended charge, that Mr. Sumner has never once (I be- 
lieve) been called to order for transgressing one of them. His 
speech it would be unjust to compare with those of Demosthe- 
nes and Cicero, who deal freely in gross personal abuse, with- 
out much scruple as to truth : and it would be gratuitous in- 
sult to compare it with the tone of insolence and effrontery which 
has unhappily been too common in our Congress. Take the 
common law of parliamentary decorum, acknowledged in the 
practice of the famous orators of the last sixty years : I do not 
scruple to say, that, whatever Mr. Sumner's bitterness of retort, 
or offensiveness of tone, it is more than matched in the master- 
pieces of both Burke and Webster. 

I take pains to say this, because the point has been studious- 
ly falsified and misjudged. It is not that the language is at 
fault, but because slavery was the object of attack. That is 
the forbidden thing. Threats have failed to check freedom of 
debate upon it, and argument is fatal. Therefore club-law 
must be resorted to. From words the appeal must lie to blows. 
It is important to understand, that Mr. Sumner is the victim 
of a conspiracy to crush the freedom of congressional debate 
on that topic. For five sessions he has never, by any bitterness 
of attack, been provoked to a personal retort: as soon as he 
shows himself more than his opponents' match in invective, 
and fears not to meet them on their own ground, it is at the 
hazard of his life. 

And now, we are told, the majority of Congress carry weap- 
ons to their seats. Representatives in a free Republic go 
armed against one another, in little knots and companies in 
the street, like the houses at feud in the old Italian cities: and 
the daily rumor from the Capitol is of challenge to deadly 
fight, of personal assault, of killing in self-defence — happily, thus 
far, untrue. Such, we are told, is the state of things in Wash- 
ington, which is or ought to be the head-quarters of our patri- 
otic interest and pride. It is not the political fault or error on 
either side that I arraign : but the ominous and dreadful fact, 



that the passions of men in places of power seem more and 
more to override their judgment ; that violence is coming to 
be appealed to instead of justice ; that a rei^rn of terror seems 
to be impending, whose beginning is God only knows how near, 
whose end, if once we enter upon it, is God only knows how 
far off ! 

Perhaps not the least alarming token is the temper of the 
popular mind, as brought out by these events. What verdict 
the broad, honest sense of the country at larsre may pronounce 
upon them, when they once come to be understood, one would 
suppose there could be no doubt. I should be sorry to think 
that mere party feeling could go so far as really to blind any 
honest man to them : I do not believe yet that any party, as 
such, will accept the " deep damnation " of being responsible 
for them. 

Yet at the moment of hasty passion and excitement, symp- 
toms turn up, that show a state of things one would not wil- 
lingly believe in. That this new avenger of blood should be up- 
held by the voice of his own State, for whose imaginary honor 
he has forfeited his own, is not so much to wonder at. But that 
so mere a piece of cowardly brutality could find those at the 
North, men who have no personal interest except the other way, 
not only to apologize for it but to glory in it, out of mere vin- 
dictive hate to the shadow of a name, a prejudice against a 
brave gentleman they never saw — seems perplexing and in- 
credible. Now that the better tone of the southern press is 
heard, in honest execration of the border war in Kansas, and 
the late assault in Washington, we may hope that these base 
apologies will cease. Till within a day or two, there seemed 
real cause to fear, that the violent exasperation and sectional 
resentment of the north would be the only check to the sys- 
tem of terror. Let us hope to the last that Conscience may 
speak, and Honor, — calmly, judicially, and everywhere alike. 

I have not time to speak now ol' the causes which have led, 
[gradually and almost unawares, to this pass. Every thought- 
ful person will have observed them, in the increasing bitter- 
ness of party spirit, which grows reckless and unscrupulous, 
or blinds itself wilfully, and chooses not to be moderate or 
just. Especially we have to lament the tendency, more and 
more powerful, to sectional divisions, and the sacrifice of all 
other interests to the one overpowering one, which threatens 
to master the sovereignty of the States and the liberties of the 
Republic. Then there are the license and abuse of speech, 
the disgraceful vocabulary of party politics, the foulmouthed 



accusation hurled to and fro, the envenomed war of words, 
making the grave high courtesies of public life more difficult 
and rare. Along with this, the loss of dignity of Legislature 
and Judiciary : the people have learned not to honor their 
rulers, and the rulers have learned not to honor themselves, — 
till we blush for the shame of our public bodies ; we submit 
these many years to hear the House of Representatives called 
"Bear-Garden;" and many feel neither astonishment nor 
horror in the announcement, that the Senate chamber itself 
has been made a field of blood. 

These things bear their last and legitimate fruit among a 
border population trained to violence. Cassius Clay speaks at 
the daily peril of his life ; fights the battle of freedom with 
the weapons of border warfare, and kills his assailant with his 
own hand. A friend of mine, travelling in Missouri a few 
years ago, saw a father and child ; — the boy in a violent passion 
with his father, who laughed and cheered him on, encouraged 
him to strike, put a knife in his little clenched hand, and 
taught him to thrust and parry. Such is the early training, 
that makes what we know afterwards as a border-ruffian. And 
it is one deadly symptom of the time, that barbarism of that 
sort finds its way to Washington, and imports its bloody code 
of morals there — shown in this one session already by at least 
four cases of malignant or passionate assault. 

These all are but incidents in the great warfare of Freedom 
and Slavery, which for forty years has been more and more at 
the heart of every great public controversy. The political 
and moral aspect of that debate, at a time when it was partly 
lulled by a series of acts of doubtful policy, and one of them 
at least of worse morality, I discussed pretty fully five years 
ago. Then the indignant sense of right was extensively put 
to sleep for a time. All sections seemed to acquiesce in the 
arrangement with a feeling of relief, — save only the great out- 
rage of the Fugitive Slave Law to all the better sort of men, — 
as if the quarrel had been more violent, and the alarm more 
near, than anything very tangible seemed to justify. 

Of the course of policy that has been followed since I say 
not a word. One thing at least, it has not tended to the pub- 
lic peace. Call it if you will the profligate policy of the 
President and his advisers. Call it if you will a fatality of 
our condition, that this spectre of Discord must forever be 
rising up, and will not be long quelled. It is all the same. 
Something in the antagonism of Freedom and Slavery itself, 
which are locked in mortal wrestle on our soil — something in 



8 

the contending types of civilization and public morals prevail- 
ing at the south and north — something in the misunderstand- 
ing and strife that grow from party conflict and are embittered 
by jarring and hostile interests — something in the confusion of 
political maxims and relations by the shifting character of the 
population itself — local ties broken up by emigration, strange 
elements brought in by immigration, the wild and gambling 
hazards of political adventure — whatever the source, here at 
hand is the aggravated and embittered strife. This is the one 
ghost that will not down at our bidding, the one question which 
forever rises up to perplex our peace. 

The advance of what we have all learned now to call the 
Slave Power, has within the last ten years been portentous 
and appalling. I will not recite, the steps of it, but only point 
to the fact, that within less than that period nun now in the 
highest station publicly maintained a qualified hostility to 
Slavery, which they are willing now to threaten with death as 
treason; that political platforms have been formed once and 
again on principles which are now abandoned to those whom 
their framers brand with the stigma of disunionists for defend- 
ing them: that party leaders have shown a bad alacrity at re- 
treat, have been emulous to yield point after point before it 
was demanded, have been eager with an unholy zeal to oxer- 
throw the old landmarks of freedom and State rights, — till now 
the direct and personal peril, all along felt to be involved, 
comes close home upon us. We are waiting now, it is said, 
for a judicial edict which declares that there can benone other 
than ■-lave soil in our whole republic : our brothers and friends 
in Kansas arc in danger of being shot, or J 1 1 1 1 1 ^r tor treason, for 
disclaiming the rule of armed bandits from beyond their fron- 
tier J and that, on ground two years ago declared sale, (though 
do longer alas sacred,) to freedom forever. Follow the same 
course live years more, and it will be treason and peril of one's 
life, to say what I am saying now. Our talk in the stre< ta 
will be conned and noted down against US : our Bteps will be 
d bj spies ; and our children (for is not white slavery al- 
ready the Virginia creed '.) may be on their way to the market 
of human flesh ! 

Such beini: the course of things that has brought us to this 
pass, I speak next as shortly as 1 can of the great central con- 
flict, that gives direction to the re--. In so doing, 1 am ob- 
liged unwillingly to recall to your mind a lew of the facts 
which 1 hope are already familiar to you all. 

It is often a chance shot that decides where the battle shall 



begin, and confounds all the calculation of commanders. It is 
the crossing of air currents in a particular spot that begins the 
gathering of a tempest, which draws the elements far and 
wide into its whirling circle, and sweeps the whole breadth of 
a continent. It is with something of the awe with which we 
should hear the first gun of a siege, or watch the gathering 
thunderbolt, or feel the dull dread tremor of the earthquake, 
that we strain our eyes to the far West, and watch for tidings 
of the battle of liberty in Kansas. 

I need not tell the story, still fresh, of the settlement of 
that brave young State. You know that two years ago, quick- 
ened and alarmed at the breaking of the long truce, and the 
overthrow of the thirty-four years' landmark of freedom, men 
at the north, — not fanatics but men of commerce, calm and 
cautious men, conservative men, skilful of plans and ample 
as to means, — combined to open that territory to settlers on 
attractive terms; and that in an incredibly short time a flour- 
ishing town, with New England institutions of church and 
school and factory and mill, became the centre of a considera- 
ble population, seeking only freedom, prosperity and unmolest- 
ed peace. All this was open, fair, aboveboard ; — a piece of 
legitimate business enterprise, invited by the very terms of 
the organic law of that territory. 

You also know — for it has been shown judicially under oath, 
and is put beyond all further question — that at the same time 
a secret League was organized, with a bond of unlawful oaths 
and the threat of death to any who should betray its purpose ; — 
a league to carry companies of armed men into the same ter- 
ritory, and at all hazards force the institution of Slavery upon 
a people who regarded it with fear and detestation. The oppo- 
sition of the majority of settlers to slavery was simple and 
well defined. It would break up their harmony. It would 
blast their prosperity. It would degrade their condition as a 
working people. It would reduce the value of their land. 
It would expose them to the hazards and barbarisms of a fron- 
tier plantation life. All this they knew so well, that the great 
majority of those who went thither from the South joined them 
in seeking to avert from their homesteads this calamity and 
curse. Only a day or two before the ruin of their settlement, 
they were joined by thirty or forty of the very regiment sent a 
thousand miles on purpose to subdue them by force. 

You also knTJw, that by this secret league an armed invasion 
was set on foot, and companies of riotous men took possession 
of the polls. By violence and threats they drove off the judges 



10 

of election and the legal voters; qualified a fresh electoral 
body by the certificate of profane oaths, guns and knives ; 
and proceeded to elect a Legislature of their own, over the 
heads of the actual settlers, — treating them in all respects as 
the people of a province conquered and enslaved. 

You also know something of the atrocious character of the 
legislation which the body of men chosen thus in mockery 
and defiance, proceeded to force upon the territory — legislation 
which makes free speech criminal, free thought a disqualifica- 
tion for the simplest civil right, and theatens an application of 
the world's common law of liberty to the fugitive with death; 
and then enforces the iniquitous code by a corps of officers who 
are not even inhabitants of the territory they came to rule, 
and many of them its sworn enemies. 

You also know that in the course of these events, carrying 
a reign of terror through the whole of last year's smiling Bum- 
mer, at least three deliberate murders took place — the mur- 
derers going still all at large, unchallenged, unsought, un- 
tried ;* and that the dreadful winter's cold was made more 
dreadful by a wanton assault and threatened massacre, keep- 
ing the inhabitants for weeks in terror of their lives, obliged 
to mount guard through day and night in the bitter frost : the 
assault being only averted by God's silent artillery of cold, 
and the false rumor of the preparations made to resist. 

Finally, the peaceful and provisional adoption of a state 
constitution, and the mere petition to be acknowledged as a 
State, simply declining to recognize the authority forced on 
them by armed bands, is treated now as treason. By base and 
treacherous tricks the leaders are made prisoners that the peo- 
ple may be the more defenceless ; and desperate bands are 
summoned by hundreds, thirsting for rapine and blood, who 
come threatening that within two months not a stone shall 
be left Btanding of the town of Lawrence, nor one of its in- 
habitants on the spot alive Not submission but massacre is 
what they openly demand. 

1 believe I have not Btrayed a word beyond the authentic and 
unquestionable record, in thus tracing the outlines ^\' a great 
crime winch would he incredible if it were reported o\' an in- 
sane despol of Elindostan, or of the worst caprice of Neapoli- 

•I have in my hand a list of five hostile invasions, I light murders, 
(none of which have been noticed by the authorities,] and four news- 
paper offices destroyed, ap to the attack upon the town of Lawrence, 
May 21, 1866. This attack was niade under the red flag of Disunion, 
the invaders tiring upon the stripes and stars. 



11 

tan tyranny. Some of the details of massacre and assault rest 
on rumors still uncertain : all the rest, I believe, is on recorded 
evidence, absolutely beyond challenge, which only repeats in 
horrible detail what I have just touched in rapid outline. That 
a nation called a Republic can see such a crime committed in 
its borders, unrepressed and unavenged by those whom it en- 
trusts with its authority, is a terror and amazement such as 
I remember not the like of in history, since papal tyranny 
blasted the heretic South of France, and drove the brave 
multitudes of the Huguenots to scaffolds and caves and exile. 
More than anything else, it reminds us of the oath of the old 
Greek Oligarchies, that they would " bear the common people 
in perpetual hate, and do them all possible harm, continually." 

Nor should I omit a word touching the admirable conduct 
of the settlers themselves — wonderful in their calm courage 
amidst the terror of the long outrage. So far as I know, or 
have ever heard, not one act of violence, not one threat of vio- 
lence, has once been laid to their account. Compelled to pre- 
pare for their defence against wanton invasion and massacre, 
they have declared their last resort to be the weapons which 
every settler takes to the wilderness: yet, during a two years' 
oppression, we do not hear yet of their having fired a single 
shot. If a fault has ever been charged on them, it is their hon- 
est and open appeal to this resort against the leagued and brutal 
force of a secret oath-bound conspiracy. Yet no — even this 
they are free from. Friends afar off, indiscreet perhaps, at 
New Haven and elsewhere, have cheered them to it ; but no 
word of menace has come from them. Their only crime is, 
that they simply and peacefully disown a lawless rule attempt- 
ed to be forced on them by knife and gun ; that they appeal 
to the organic Act giving territorial sovereignty, and choose to 
govern themselves. 

" Constructive treason" is the name their assailants give to 
their defence — preferring to hang them in cold blood to the 
more equal chances of an exchange of blows. But " Treason 
against the United States," says the calm language of the 
Constitution, " shall consist only in levying war against them, or 
in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort," — 
overt acts which must be proved by two witnesses at least; 
declaring beforehand against the possibility of such a charge 
as that now made. These colonists earnestly plead devotion 
to the authority of the United States. They earnestly appeal 
to the public force to protect them, and save the hazard and 
infamy of a border war. They volunteer as a Marshall's posse, 



12 

to laj their hands on their nun leader?, and BDrrender them to 
i nited States authority. The weapons which alone have 

b1 1 between them and massacre they retain urn 

guarantee of the Constitution, and dare not surrender. And 
»nly by the base artifice of a tyranny which absolutely 
n fuses beforehand all term-; of conciliation, that it is sought, 
by out; and another fiction, to compel them into apparent tech- 
nical collision with the authority they have constantly appeal- 
ed to as their only safeguard. 

And now the consummation comes, in the condition of things 
I mentioned at setting out. The men of Lawrence are disarm- 
ed, then plundered and driven away : a few, happily only a few 
as yet, are shot. Cannon are planted against private dwellings 
and hotels, and the thunders of siege are heard. Brave men, 
not to endanger the town, fly to the hospitable refuge of friend- 
ly savages, and make their perilous escape from the territory 
they still hope to rescue from its invader-. Women are out- 
raged, -tores and dwellings are ransacked, peaceful travellers 
plundered, unarmed colonists shot in the hack, or caught and 
Ji 1 1 11 lt . And then the mocking message comes, from the rav- 
aged and smoking rum, that if no more resistance is offered 
to the invaders, if the instinct of liberty is at length thorough- 
ly crushed and quelled, there maj yet he peace ' 

It is difficult, in recounting such things as these, to fancy 
that we are speaking of our own Republic, of our own time 
and land, of the fate of our own friends and neighbors. Anx- 
iously I have sought for some shade of apology, something that 
might lighten this damning blol on the American name, some- 
thing thai might convince me I had been mi-taken or mi-led, 
and might make the aspect of things less utterly humiliating. 
Hut I find nothing, no room tor doubt, no pretence of apology. 
I find only insolent and domineering assertion, as of conquerors 
to vanquished; or else, as the sole defence, a systematic con- 
cealment or denial of the fact, bo hideous in its black enor- 
mity; or the still more shallow plea of those who choose to 
know nothing about it. And. as calm I j as 1 know how to con- 
sider it, I do not think I have overstated either the guilt or the 

terror of thai greal crime. 

This one illustration of the dark and appalling march of the 
barbaric Power thai seeks to " Bubdue us" I have fell obliged 
to give at full length, thai we may Bee in a single glance the 
position into winch we seem likelj to be compelled. It seems 
evident, from the course of things winch 1 have thus traced a 
little was, thai peace and conciliation are neither the e\; 



13 

tion nor the wish of those who force our country to this con- 
test. They desire not equal alliance, but subjugation ; or else 
hostility, violence and blood. 

Their motive for this I do not judge. At a distance it seems 
the mere madness of insanity, or passion, or hate. Perhaps 
if we could see it a little nearer, we might find that it has a 
show of policy in it ; that the doom of Slavery is felt in the 
conscience of those who uphold it ; that they are stung and 
goaded perpetually by secret apprehensions of that doom, 
and feel that it is hastened by their alliance with a free people ; 
that the only condition of life to Slavery, is like that to a prai- 
rie fire, new fields to ravage ; that they are dazzled by the gor- 
geous vision of a Tropical Republic, resting on the basis of con- 
quest and slavery. Whatever the motive, it does not seem 
that any terms of peace are sincerely proposed, or would be 
accepted if they were. They themselves say loudly that the 
strife is inexpiable and deadly ; and they are fast coming to 
make it so. 

The only terms on which a lasting accord of principle could 
be had, would be, by the new doctrine of the Slavery propa- 
gandists, these three : 

First, That Slavery shall have control of all the territories 
of the Republic, including right of domain in all the States ; 

Secondly, The restoration of the African Slave Trade, with 
the unchecked liberty of swamping the whole industry of the 
country with those wretched children of barbarism that come 
over, close-packed gaunt skeletons, in the hold of slave-ships; 
and 

Thirdly, The absolute suppression of all question or discus- 
sion as to the right of Slavery in principle; and this, appa- 
rently, of the black or white race alike. 

The first is already the dominant and accepted creed. The 
second has been demanded for now several years, and is already 
practised to a large extent. The last, it has just been an- 
nounced, is to be enforced by a system of violence and terror 
in Congress ; and Lynch law, we are told, is to be yet the law 
of the Northern States. White Slavery has already been jus- 
tified, as the consistent consummation of the system : — and 
when we are prepared to accept it for ourselves, then, doubt- 
less, and not before, this long controversy may be ended ! 

One other consummation alone is possible, which is, the 
gradual or violent extermination of Slavery itself. Fearing 
this, which would be the death blow of the ruling class, and 
not believing yet that the first is possible — that we are ready 



14 

yet to deliver over our sons and daughters into bondage — I 
think the Blaveholding Oligarchy, (or those who unhappily 

represent it at this moment,) desire to cut the knot by inau- 
gurating a reign of terror; to stirle the discussion as long 
as they can by threats which they trust may be heeded yet a 
little while ; when these fail them, and they are met on equal 
ground, then to resort to violence and blood. And, when the 
strife is inevitable, to take such chances as may turn up in the 
general overthrow. 

This at least seems — once allowing for the real difficulty 
and terror of their position — to be, if not a safe and righteous 
policy, at any rate a consistent, intelligible and plausible policy. 
On this ground, and no other, I account for the many assaults 
which have been threatened or actually committed at Wash- 
ington, closing with that of the other day. As you know, 
John Quincy Adams lived there for years, under the standing 
menace of personal assault. The bolder leaders of the oppo- 
sition to Slavery, have all along confronted the same peril. 
And now that they openly defy it, and answerback with words 
not of menace but of exasperation and contempt, the threat is 
put in practice. Hitherto, one party only has been armed, and 
prepared to defend its ground ; now they have compelled the 
other party to take the attitude of armed defence. Hitherto, 
they have treated us with mere arrogant and open scorn ; now, 
scorn gives place to dread, and dread breeds violence. 

It is not that they think to conquer or overawe the North — 
at least only for a time. It is, that they really chafe and fear 
under the restraints of this alliance, under which, by the m-" 
evitable condition of things, Slavery can only drag out a lin- 
gering decline, more and more hated and despised, even by 
many whom it implicates ; more and more exposed to secret 
plots in its own bosom. Doubtless they would prefer to wield 
still longer the power of the expansive and vast Republic, — 
which for so small an oligarchy musl be harder every year : 
and they may possibly take courage from the past, and think 
we will submit to have our fields taken from us, our houses 
ravaged, our children subjected to that gloomy future. But 
still likelier, to judge from the course of policy that seems to 
be pursued, they do not expect even this: and choosethe open 
terrors of a bloody fight before the secret plots and fears of 
their position now. 

Yoi will bear me witness, my friends, that it is with deep 
pain and reluctance I say such words as these. Near six years 



15 

ago I removed from the seat of our national government, to 
share again the institutions and hospitable rites of our New 
England. There I had watched for three years the course of 
this momentous debate. T had known many on both sides of 
the imaginary line that parts our Republic, to honor and love. 
Deeply had 1 felt the pain and dread of those passions that 
then were brooding : and though it was with something of 
humiliation and perplexity of spirit, yet when the terms of 
compromise were proposed and ratified, I was too well assured 
of the predominant feeling of the country at large, not to 
believe it inevitable to submit — not to do a wrong : no penalty 
of an unjust government can compel that : but to undergo the 
regret, and loss of self-respect, and sense of national dishonor, 
that come of seeing one's dear country in a false attitude 
before the world. I thought Disunion meant disunion then, 
and I think it means that now. But I believed that a free and 
manly conscience would by degrees negative the wrong that 
was involved in the great blessing of a temporary peace. And 
I had faith in our country, that discords might heal silently, 
and God's laws of growth might more gently do away the in- 
grained evil. 

It is with deep sorrow, and unwillingly, that I return to the 
theme again, and in a tone rather of despondency than hope. 
You will not misjudge what I say. I am no politician. I fear 
to meddle even distantly with the wires that move the great 
machinery of State. But I am a citizen and a man. I do 
believe that the first of our duties now, is freedom of thought 
and speech. I believe the time comes speedily, when it must 
be known of every man, on what side he stands of the great 
question of our day. And standing in a position eminently 
demanding sincerity of speech, honored with a trust given me 
on the explicit and open condition that I should use it so, I 
have spoken of this impending crisis, as plainly as I knew 
how. 

One thing more. I trust the freedom of our speech, the 
warmth of our debate, may be untempered by any personal 
malice or resentment, — so far as possible, by any personal allu- 
sions. The admirable conduct of those brave pioneers, who 
through so many months of aggravated assault never once 
adopted the weapons of their assailants, should serve as an 
example to all who in any sphere stand as champions of invad- 
ed liberty. So far, thank Heaven, not a blow has been struck 
by a northern hand. Except in the last life and death grapple 
with a ruffian, one should maintain the grave and knightly 



16 

courtesies of combat Let the weapons of truth he well 
forged: let her blows be struck home, and with no stint of 

strength : hut let her banner be unsoiled by the stain of any- 
thing unworthy the nobility of her cause. The allian 
I'r.c men is not in hostility and hate toward- their antagonists. 
It is the league of self-protection : it is the strength of " armed 
justice in defence of beleaguered Truth." The earnest temper 
of the debate admits not the bitterness of personal quarrel. 
And our battle lor the Right will be victorious, according as 
we have hearty faith in God, who shall vindicate and sustain 
the Right. 



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